Why Silence Is Often the Route I Take

So yesterday was not a very good day....Yesterday I felt like I could relate with Meg Ryan a lot from You've Got Mail. That is at least at the part when she has dinner with "Joe" and finally tells him off and then afterwards regrets it deeply. As she reviews the situation, she talks about how she never has the right comebacks when she talks with people and now that she finally did have good comebacks, she felt really awful about it and wished she could take it all back. So yesterday I had a volleyball game and also tray washing duty with my girls. After checking in with a series of people, I thought I had the situation cleared and went to my game, leaving my girls in the care of a kitchen staff. After the game, my girls informed me that the head kitchen lady had gotten really mad at them. In a moment of defensiveness I stopped in the cafe while running up to the cabin to hopefully let the head cook know I was sorry and also to see why she had become so upset about the matter. Upon running into the kitchen, I quickly found the right person and then asked her if my girls had been a problem. She looked pretty upset and I should have at that moment left and came back later. She then expressed that yes it had been an issue and I stated that I thought I had gone up the chain of command correctly and that it was my bad but not the girls so to yell at me next time instead of the my girls. This clearly upset her and she said that she had not yelled at them. With my girls already almost up at the cabin, I knew I didn't have time to argue this out fully so I left without fininishing the conversation. Bad move. Upon getting bad to the cabin, I knew I should not have made my comment about the girls, but it had seemed so perfect at the moment and I knew I hit right where I guess I wanted it to, making her seem like the bad guy in the situation. Well after talking with and apologizing to the girls director and the dishboy who got in trouble, I decided to let things cool before I went back and apologized to the cook. Well no such luck because within five minutes I had to walk by the cafe and was spotted by the cook who rushed outside and stated that she needed to speak with me. Luckily the girls director was right there and came with me, but one glance at the cook informed me that her anger had only escalated. I let her spew first and then started my side of the story, with sorries interspirsed for every aspect of the situation that I felt had annoyed her from not communicating correctly to rushing in and accusing her without first taking a step back to survey the situation. Several times she interrrupted and once again, I opened my big mouth and asked if I could please finish my story, I did it in a polite way, but I could tell it just floored her even more. Finally I felt like I had said sorry as many times as I could and that the conversation was getting no where so I left and felt ten times worse than when I started. I promptly went back to my cabin and cried. The cook obviously was still very angry and I felt that she would probably for the rest of the summer have an awful impression of me and I didn't know what else to do to change it. Part of me was angry as well, I had been the bigger person in the situation, had taken all blame, apologized, etc. I felt like she was upset, because I had been disrespectful in the situation, and she was the adult, but in all reality I felt like I had been working with people older than her and had been a peer all this past year and a half and that frankly I was acting more like the adult in the situation. She didn't have any apologies to offer and didn't seem to have any intention of forgiving me either. I had not left my girls in the cafe purposefully knowing that it was wrong. I had said I was sorry and that it would never happen again, etc. After having a talk with Graves, life looked a little bit better, but I still had a pit in the bottom of my stomach. So last night I wrote another letter to the cook, once again offering my apologies and thanking her for her hard work. After leaving it on her desk, I would like to say that I since then I have felt wonderful about life and have put the whole event behind me, but I haven't. After a lot of prayer, God has given me quite a bit of peace about the matter, but the side of me that always wants everyone to like me, continues to make it impossible for me to be completely satisfied with the situation. So after a hard lesson, I have realized why I often don't stick up for myself, it is because when I do it doesn't seem to end very peacefully. So I continue to pray that God gives me the knowledge of when I actually need to speak out and when silence is better. So there is a little insight into Brittany Gimbel.

In reply to my last post :)

This week I am actually a full-time counselor. Still a lot of new challenges but am getting used to things. After my last blog, I left a lot of people with the impression that I was not happy to be here so wanted to clear that up :). Unfort got my annual summer cold right now, but enjoying getting to know my girls! I have truly had fun getting to know so many new awesome people out here and it is absolutely gorgeous. Love and miss everyone!